Her Mourning Elegance
by The PalletShipping Ninja
Summary: Yumi doesn't think she's depressed. She doesn't hate school, she doesn't hate her classmates, she doesn't even hate having to risk her life twice a week saving the world. It sucks, but she doesn't hate it. She deals.


Her Mourning Elegance

There are some days when she just can't bear to go in.

Yumi doesn't think she's depressed. She doesn't hate school, she doesn't hate her classmates, she doesn't even hate having to risk her life twice a week saving the world. It sucks, but she doesn't hate it. She deals.

But, like all teenagers, she thinks, there are some days when she can't bring herself to get up. Not heeding to her alarm clock, she waits until her mother is pulling her covers away, shrilly telling her she only has fifteen minutes to get ready, and sometimes she'll get up. Other times she'll tell her mom she is feeling sick, or has bad period pain, and prays her mother will believe it and let her stay in the safety of her bed, away from her life and the problems that go hand in hand with it.

When these days happen, sometimes the house is blissfully quiet, and she can relish the silence, sleep it off, take a long bath or stare around her room wondering when she became so dedicated to being responsible, juggling saving the world with her schoolwork, her sleep, her social life. When was the last time she had time to herself? When was the last time she read some shoujo manga, or listened to Night Vale, or lay around watching a talk show?

Other days the shouting will pull her away from these thoughts. Her house can be happy, but often it is not, and when Hiroki isn't there pestering her to watch Kerub with him it becomes painfully more obvious how bad some of these fights are. It's no mystery to her that twelve years ago her father had an affair with Risako Himura, an old family friend, because in almost every heated argument they have (not one of their good-natured ones, such as debating what to cook or which of their mothers cooked better tempura) her name surfaces. She isn't sure why her mother doesn't just let it go – after all, Risako is in Japan and they are in France. Surely her father isn't going to do it again? But when she hears them at it, sending back and forth spiteful words and accusations filled with hurt, she wishes she had just gone to school like normal. A lot of the time, they don't even remember she is here, curled up in her bed and listening to every word.

If there was a way for her to sprout wings like Aelita's she would, and she would use them to fly out of her bedroom window, her feet kicking cherry blossoms out of the tree, and she would fly far away from everything in her life holding her down. She'd struggle against the wind until she could finally push past, and she wouldn't have to worry about where to apply for after Kadic, or how long her parents are planning to stay together, or how long Ulrich will continue to hold her accountable for the wrong turns in their strange relationship, or the stabbing guilt she feels whenever William looks at her. She wouldn't have to think about the dull ache that spreads in her chest when Jeremie and Aelita walk together, or how Hiroki cries when their parents fought, or the fact that she is miserably flunking history.

It's a dream that will never come true, so on these bad days she sits in her room and cries her eyes out. Sometimes it will go on for days. Everything that she normally brushes off with a shrug and a smile hits her full frontal, and she sobs until her throat aches and her voice is hoarse, until her head throbs and her eyes are sore, until her skin is scratched raw and bleeding. All of her problems will stab her in her heart and the taunting words will sound in her ears;

_Why can't you just suck it up? Why can't you be normal? Why do you have to be the one saving the world? Why do you have to be the only Asian family in the neighbourhood? Why do you have to have this fucking stupid crush on her? Why can't you just go back to Ulrich like you would have done two years ago? Why do your parents have to be the ones who fight? Why can't you just tell them to work it out? Why don't they just split? Why can't you be nicer to Hiroki? Why can't you just do better in history? Why can't everything just stop?_

She'll go to sleep crying and wake up crying. She can survive when she's at school, in the factory or on Lyoko. She laughs with her friends, jokes, and they don't suspect a thing. Her friends are oblivious, her teachers unaware that anything is wrong. Even Ulrich can't detect anything abnormal, even Jeremie carries on as normal. (Odd doesn't notice, but then that doesn't come as a surprise.) Aelita watches her sometimes, gives her a sad, questioning look, and Yumi's chest tightens and her stomach gets warm and she smiles at her thinly in return, but Aelita will never say anything because she expects Yumi to come forward in her own time. Of course, Yumi doesn't say anything either. What could she say to them, when in their presence she is totally fine?

But when she gets home it washes over her again, and she bursts into tears.

Her mother doesn't like to mention it, but the red marks and drying scabs around Yumi's ears are getting worse again. Yumi knows it. She touches them carefully as she hides them behind her hair.

* * *

><p><em>Yumi's melancholy is based off my own. Sometimes I just cry for days and can't figure out why. Sometimes I just feel so much pain for no reason. Sometimes I scratch. A lot of things about Yumi's life are dysfunctional, so I felt like if anyone could relate to these feelings I get at my absolute worst, it would be her. I also alluded to Yumilita because let's face it Yumi would make the best bisexual and also her healthiest relationship in the group seems to be with Aelita tbh.<em>

_Title is a pun of Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie, which is the song that gets me through most of these bad periods of time in my life. The girl in the song reminds me of Yumi, so._


End file.
